My Own Catholic Music

For a couple of decades, I have, on occasion, written a few pieces of music. This started when I was on the Confirmation Retreat team in my parish, and I would write one for the kids for each retreat.

As years passed, I started writing them just because somebody asked me to, or because I was inspired by someone’s personal situation/struggle/victory or because something hit me that I thought might be fun to put together.

I have since lost most of the original files in a fire, but the music is still around because I 1) put it on CD’s and 2) uploaded them to my other blog site.

Most of these are 10 – 20 years old, but a couple are more recent.You can tell the earliest onesby the the sound quality, I think.

None of these songs are professionally recorded, so the quality may not be great. OK – I’ll rephrase that – the sound quality is, in most cases, not great. OK – I’ll rephrase that – the sound quality is not sterling. But they were fun to do, and my heart was in each of them when I did it.

A couple of years ago, I was blessed to connect with Lori Rae Martin at AudioGirl Productions. We corresponded back and forth about how I might be able to get some of my songs professionally produced using the original files (the ones that didn’t exist any longer :-)) and I told her they had gone up in smoke along with the rest of my house. I think she must have felt sorry for me because she surprised me with this banner (See the top of this page)! (Hahaha)

Lori’s kindness has always meant a lot to me, and I have been a fan of AudioGirl ever since.

Anyway, I thought I would put some of them up here for anyone who would like to listen…

(My wife and I were out to dinner one evening about 15 years ago and she said to me, “You should write a song for the Blessed Mother.” I scribbled a big part of it down right there on a napkin. I don’t know where it came from – it just came out. Maybe I DO know where it came from… Koni Ritch also singing with me, here.)

I wrote and recorded this about 11 years ago. I was inspired by two friends of mine. Each of them had spent decades addicted to drugs, alcohol and and all that goes with that addiction. One lived on the streets most of that time. The other was in the rock music world. Both of them hit bottom and cried out to God. God heard and answered their cries. Both of them became close friends of mine…One is now a priest – he was the pastor of my parish at the time. The other had become our Music Director in the parish. He has since gone home. To where God led him…

Always liked Leonard Cohen’s song “Halleluja” and thought it would be nice to put some Christmas words to it. So, December 23, 2015, I picked up my 12 string, sat down at the computer and did it. Not a great recording or vocals, but my heart was in it. Sang it at Christmas Mass the next night with my friend Midge. It was better then.